[
 {
  "chunk": 167,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "While a hideous plague ravages his lands, a prince retreats with a thousand chosen courtiers into a walled abbey, welds the gates shut, and fills it with every pleasure, leaving the world outside to fend for itself.",
  "predicament": "A powerful man walls himself and his favourites off from a deadly danger, and leaves everyone outside to their fate."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 168,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "In the fifth or sixth month of seclusion, with the plague at its worst outside, the prince gives a masked ball of unusual magnificence.",
  "predicament": "People safely shut away from a catastrophe outside throw a lavish celebration while others die beyond the walls."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 169,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The ball is held in seven winding rooms, each a single colour lit through matching windows, except the last, black with blood-red panes, which few dare enter.",
  "predicament": "Revellers in a sealed retreat avoid one room whose look reminds them of the very thing they are hiding from."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 170,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "In the black room a great clock strikes each hour so solemnly that the music and dancing stop and even the giddiest grow pale, then laugh at their nervousness.",
  "predicament": "People determined to enjoy themselves are stopped short every hour by a reminder of time running out, and laugh it off."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 171,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The revel is gay and magnificent; the prince's tastes are so bold and bizarre that some would think him mad, though his followers do not.",
  "predicament": "Followers of a lavish, eccentric leader assure themselves he is not mad, though outsiders might think otherwise."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 172,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The masquers, dressed to the prince's grotesque taste, swirl like dreams through the rooms, freezing at every chime and avoiding the black chamber as night wears on.",
  "predicament": "Revellers dance ever more wildly to forget what waits outside, but freeze each time the reminder sounds."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 173,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "At midnight, during the twelve long strokes, the crowd notices a masked figure no one had seen before, and a murmur of disapproval turns to horror.",
  "predicament": "A crowd shut in for safety notices among them an uninvited stranger whom no one saw arrive."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 174,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The stranger is dressed as a plague corpse, spattered with blood; the prince, first shuddering, then enraged, orders him seized and unmasked to be hanged at dawn.",
  "predicament": "A leader who shut out a danger sees it mocked openly inside his own walls, and orders the offender seized."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 175,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The prince, a bold man, speaks from the blue room, and at his gesture the music falls silent.",
  "predicament": "A leader's angry command rings through a hushed room, and everyone waits to see who will obey."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 176,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "No one dares touch the figure, who walks slowly through all the rooms; the shamed prince chases him with a dagger into the black room, where the figure turns and the prince falls dead; the revellers seize the mask and find nothing inside.",
  "predicament": "A leader, ashamed of his own fear, rushes alone at the thing everyone dreads, and it kills him where he stands."
 },
 {
  "chunk": 177,
  "story": 9,
  "summary": "The plague has come in like a thief; the revellers die one by one in the halls, the clock stops and the fires go out, leaving darkness, decay and death.",
  "predicament": "People who believed their walls would keep a catastrophe out discover it was inside with them all along."
 }
]